The sharing of video content on websites has developed in a worldwide phenomenon, supported by dozens of websites. On average, over 100,000 videos are posted every day to various video hosting websites, and this number is increasing, as the tools and opportunities for capturing video become easy to use and more widespread. In some cases, the individuals who post videos are unaware that others may have rights in the video content, audio content, or both or a particular video. For example, it is relatively simple to find copies of music videos by well known artists, as well as homemade video that include audio soundtracks from copyrighted music works.
When a video is posted that contains audio content that is owned by a copyright holder such as music label or music publisher, or individual, that content owner has the right under current copyright law, particularly the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, to issue a “takedown” notice to the hosting website, requesting that it remove the identified video. Currently in the United States, the website must then remove the identified video and provide an opportunity for the user who posted the video to challenge the notice. The handling of takedown notices results in increased overhead in terms of mechanisms to handle the notices and user responses in order to ensure legal compliance. In addition, the removal of posted videos is disruptive of the overall user experience on the website.